| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 132.2

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 132.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Slavery and the Meetinghouse: The Quakers and the Abolitionist Dilemma, 1820–1865. By Ryan P. Jordan. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. xiv, 175 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

The role of members of the Religious Society of Friends—commonly known as Quakers—in opposition to the institution of slavery in the new American nation is well known. Friends were the first in the colonies to record their opposition to slavery—as Germantown Friends did in 1688—and the first to prohibit their members from owning slaves. In 1775, a group comprised primarily of Friends organized the first abolition society in the world. In 1784, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage expanded and became a larger organization, the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and for the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage and for Improving the African Race, more often referred to as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. In 1787, Benjamin Franklin became its president. This organization helped similar groups organize in the several states, held frequent conferences, petitioned the Constitutional Convention to outlaw slavery in the new nation, and, through its "Acting Committee," rescued many blacks who were captured by unscrupulous slave catchers who intended to sell them in the South. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society also persuaded the Constitutional Convention to end the slave trade in 1808.

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